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The crypto issues being litigated in federal courts are not only of critical significance to crypto developers and users, but also to Congress itself. The SEC's scorched‐earth approach to crypto is incompatible with Congress's exclusive legislative authority, and Congress must bring it to an end.
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[Note: This is the tenth and hopefully the last – at least for now; we won't promise that we won't ever write more on this topic! – in a series of essays responding to objections that have been made to enforcing Section Three of the Constitution. The first nine essays can be found here, here,…
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Things are heating up on patent reform in Congress, but will it go the distance? The post Inside Congress' Hot Patent Summer appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.
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Neither the House nor the Senate have fully embraced the spending limits agreed upon in the May debt limit deal, with the House seeking to spend less and the Senate seeking to spend more by abusing a budget deal loophole.
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Citizens' ability to be informed and engaged with their elected authorities requires tools that allow them to have accurate and updated information. New technologies and digitalization allow citizens to have quick, secure, and reliable access to information related to their representatives and their legislative work. The International Republican Institute (IRI) and its Peruvian partners created […] The post A Virtual Window to Peru's Congress appeared first on International Republican Institute.
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The government of Saudi Arabia has gone to extraordinary lengths to silence its critics, including brutally murdering journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Now the Saudi monarchy is hoping to silence its most powerful critic yet: the U.S. Senate.Tuesday afternoon, fireworks flew in a Senate committee room as consultants for the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) — Boston Consulting Group, Teneo, McKinsey & Company, and M. Klein — were called to explain why they and the PIF had done remarkably little to comply with a Senate inquiry into PIF's influence efforts in the U.S. The hearing got heated almost as quickly as it began with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that was holding the hearing, exclaiming that, "It's outrageous the government of Saudi Arabia is threatening members of your companies with jail time if you provide the documents this Subcommittee has requested."The Ranking Member of the subcommittee, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) also expressed disdain for the lack of transparency afforded by the PIF. "I have no sympathy for Saudi Arabia's claims of sovereign immunity," he said. "Any foreign entity wanting to do business in the U.S. must abide by U.S. laws."Sens. Blumenthal and Johnson's ire with the witnesses stems from these firms' and PIF's stubborn refusal to comply with the subcommittee's investigation of PIF's influence activities in the U.S., most notably PIF's bid to effectively take over the international game of golf via the proposed merger of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour with the U.S.-based PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. Last Monday, the two senators sent PIF a sternly worded letter, noting that PIF has even filed legal actions against each of the PIF consultants in Saudi court seeking to prevent the firms from giving the subcommittee any information that isn't approved by the Saudi government, thus essentially trying to censor the congressional investigation. At the hearing, the witnesses expressed the chilling impact this has had, with one of the firm's representatives noting its employees could face, "as much as 20 years imprisonment as well as monetary fines" in Saudi Arabia, if they comply with the subcommittee's subpoena. Silencing critics is nothing new for a Saudi regime that jails activists at home and murders them abroad. But, in this case, it's not a single Saudi critic that finds itself under attack; it's U.S. law. As Sen. Blumenthal made clear repeatedly at the hearing and in a letter sent to his colleagues on the subcommittee last Thursday, "The PIF Consultants' refusal to comply with Congressional oversight at the behest of a foreign government presents an existential risk to U.S. law." As Blumenthal further elaborated in his letter, if these firms ignore the subcommittee's subpoenas with impunity, it could create a dangerous precedent — "that American companies can shield commercial interactions with foreign governments that are directed towards the United States from oversight simply by choosing to have their contracts governed by foreign law." At the hearing, Blumenthal made clear that this was not acceptable, adding, "We are not going to sell our legal system to the highest bidder or the biggest bully."Some of the witnesses at the hearing also faced tough questions about their firms' compliance with another foreign influence law — the Foreign Agents Registration Act. There are currently five firms registered under FARA as agents of the Saudi Public Investment fund — USSA International, RF Binder Partners, Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck, Akin, Gump and Teneo. Notably, this list does not include the Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, or M. Klein, whose representatives also testified at the hearing regarding work they had done for PIF. Asked to explain this, the witnesses argued they had sought outside counsel and were told that nothing they were doing required FARA registration. In that case, Blumenthal retorted, "One of the findings we're seeing from this inquiry is that FARA needs to be strengthened." While the Saudi PIF and its consultants have repeatedly tried to dismiss PIF's activities as being little more than economic investments — and thus not requiring FARA registration — there's ample evidence the kingdom's use of PIF and its larger sportswashing operations involve much more than money. PGA Tour officials, testifying before this same subcommittee last July, explained that the PIF-backed LIV Golf is "an irrational threat [to the PGA Tour] that's not concerned with a return on investment or true growth of the game." As I mentioned when I testified before the same subcommittee in September, and based on my extensive research into Saudi influence in the U.S., PIF's actions are "part of the Kingdom's much larger lobbying, public relations, and broader influence operation in the U.S." Just two weeks ago, women's tennis titans Chris Evert and Martina Navratalova raised alarms about Saudi Arabia's hosting of the Women's Tennis Association Finals given the country's human rights record. The pair questioned "whether staging a Saudi crown-jewel tournament would involve players in an act of sportswashing merely for the sake of a cash influx."What's perhaps most concerning about Saudi sportswashing and the kingdom's unprecedented attempts to stymie a congressional inquiry is that they're happening at the same time as the Biden administration is reportedly promoting a security pact with Riyadh as part of a larger agreement for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. In short, the Biden administration is considering asking U.S. troops to fight — and possibly even die — for a monarchy which, at the same time, is actively undermining U.S. law. Needless to say, this sends a deeply troubling message to America's enemies and even its so-called "friends," like Saudi Arabia, abroad: You can meddle in our domestic politics, and not only will you do so with impunity, but you can also be rewarded with U.S. military support.
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In September 2021, the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen released a trove of internal Facebook documents. These documents showed, among other things, that Facebook knew that Instagram is toxic for teen girls. One slide summarizing internal company research said, "Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them…
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Kamala Harris could be the first woman to ever serve as president or vice president. Why are women so underrepresented in our government?
We discuss a paper from Profs. Christopher Berry at the University of Chicago and Sarah Anzia at UC Berkeley that assesses discrimination against women in the electoral process by testing how women perform once in office.
Link to paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00512.x
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Instead of eliminating Employee Retention Credit and banking the savings to reduce the deficit, members of Congress have simply redirected the money toward things donors from both parties want. Who loses out in this grand bargain? Everybody concerned about federal spending—that is, most Americans. The post Please Congress: Make Fiscal Sanity a Priority appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.
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Seth Barrett Tillman (National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth) - Faculty of Law) has posted Convening of Congress Clause (in THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION (3d ed. circa Sept. 2025, Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Under...
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The United States military is regularly running out of armaments to prosecute wars. Why? Two primary reasons include a lack of consistent funds and little focus on production. The post How Congress Could End Our Munitions Shortage appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.
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Ronald Reagan vowed to get rid of Selective Service during his 1979 presidential campaign, saying that the military draft "rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state.""That assumption isn't a new one," he said. "The Nazis thought it was a great idea."Selective Service, in which men aged 18-26 are mandated to register voluntarily, survived Reagan and remains in place to this day. Failure to register is considered a felony. According to Matt Welch at Reason, there have only been 14 convictions under this law and none since 1986, though some 100,000 men per year don't register and risk penalties like getting student loans, working a government job, or obtaining a driver's license, depending on where they reside.Now, nearly 50 years after America's last war of conscription in Vietnam, lawmakers are supporting legislation that sounds like they're preparing for another full draft.The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that passed the House on Friday contained a measure that would register men automatically with Selective Service. Whereas for a half century young men were supposed to fill out the proper paperwork on their own time, now all men would automatically be in the Selective Service database when they turn 18.Maybe congressional members will vote next to send these boys to Ukraine or Gaza? Not likely, since Congress has largely ceded warmaking authority to the Executive over the last 20 years. Are you comfortable with President Joe Biden or possibly Donald Trump making those life-and-death decisions about your son or male relative?While it is a felony not to register currently, there is still a shred of the voluntary left. Automatically registering young men for what is essentially a draftee list rips the last veil away. And though there is no active conscription for war today, this would make it a lot easier for Uncle Sam to start it.Denunciations over the amendment came quick. "Why and Where will we be sending our kids to war?" pleaded former Democratic Congressman and current House candidate Dennis Kucinich. "Does anyone hear the drums of war and see the erosion of our individual liberty?" he added. "I will veto any legislation to reinstitute the draft," vowed independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. To date, Biden or Trump haven't commented.The House effort was spearheaded by Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. Automatic registration was included in the House Armed Services Committee's version of the NDAA that passed in May, advancing through the committee in a 57 to 1 vote.According to Defense News, Houlahan said during a debate in May, "By using available federal databases, the [Selective Service] agency will be able to register all of the individuals required and thus help ensure that any future military draft is fair and equitable.""This will also allow us to rededicate resources — basically that means money — towards reading readiness and towards mobilization … rather than towards education and advertising campaigns driven to register people."Supporters believe automatic registration will cut down on bureaucratic red tape. It's curious that members of Congress actually concerned about red tape in Washington would start by making it easier to reinstitute the draft.Maybe forcing men off to foreign lands for unclear reasons where so many will not come back deserves deeper thought, deliberation, and yes, perhaps mountains of bureaucracy and red tape standing between human beings and war? Houlahan has raised the specter, so let's dust it off and take a look.Of the 58,220 U.S. military members killed in Vietnam, 17,671 of them were draftees. That's 30 percent. They had no choice in the matter. When 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was calling for mandatory national service five years ago, Cato's Doug Bandow noted that "the military doesn't want conscripts or short‐termers. The armed services learned during the Vietnam War that those who don't want to be there tend to develop discipline problems…"The Heritage Foundation's James Jay Carafano said about the political practicality of another draft, "The lesson of Vietnam, and previous wars, is that drafts require political consensus. However, such consensus cannot be presumed before a conflict."Is there any semblance of a national consensus on America's fueling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict?Military drafts have existed in every American war through Vietnam when the last draftees were deployed in 1972. Both Bandow and Carafano cite that war and potential lessons learned for a good reason.The year before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Brookings' Bruce Chapman observed, "We eliminated the draft three decades ago in part because the armed services found that they needed relatively fewer recruits to serve longer than conscription provided. As the numbers that were needed shrank, the unfairness of the draft became ever more apparent-and offensive.""The government took advantage of its free supply of almost unlimited manpower by underpaying its servicemen, thereby losing many recruits who might have chosen a military career," Chapman added, noting that conscripts can actually devalue the military in the eyes of men who otherwise might have made a career in it.It's safe to say that Rep. Houlahan has unlikely considered the many reasons a restoration of the military draft would be an awful idea.It could be that she and other members of Congress who support the automatic Selective Service can't fathom why moving in this direction is bad on its face, and that's exactly why these people shouldn't have any kind of power over the lives of America's young boys and men. Especially this power.Their lives should matter more than office efficiency.
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